Two kinds of whiteness: reimagining white people in fantasy and science fiction

A pretty common trope in science fiction and fantasy is to have fictional races stand in for Earth ones. The alien becomes the stand-in for the so-called primitive races for the white man (space explorer) to conquer, or else the supposed terrifying threat of the “alien invader” on white borders. What I’m really interested in is when white borders other than geographical ones are crossed: when whiteness itself is crossed and split.

Here’s what I mean. In some stories, (almost inevitably) white humans as we know them exist alongside alien or fantastical beings who stand in for non-white humans – but also there may be fantastical or alien beings who represent white people, too. Think of the elves in The Lord of the Rings, or the white vampires in the Twilight series. They’re stronger, faster, paler, more beautiful, and of keener senses than the (white!) humans. They’re the ultimate stand-ins for racist ideas of white people as better. Yet they exist alongside actual white people. How does that function?

I don’t have the whole answer to that, but I think it’s important to acknowledge that the borders of whiteness do shift a lot and many gaps are left. How imaginary white people exist in imaginary spaces is one of the ways of exploring that.

One of my favourite examples of, and of subverting, this is “The Woman from Altair” (1951) by Leigh Brackett. David McQuarrie has brought home to Earth Arhian, a woman from Altair. He claims that they fell in love and decided to get married, but we later find out that she was forced. The main character, Rafe, David’s brother, is really uncomfortable with her – as it turns out, for good reason, as things begin to go terribly wrong for his family once she arrives. Arhian is described as having “perfectly white and beautiful” skin, but also a “fey-looking” face and hair “the colour of amethysts”. In combining normative and non-normative features, Ahrian disrupts the idea of the alien as the antithesis of white norms.

The very ambiguity of this position is the source of her threat, as the other characters are unsure how to relate to her, and David in particular attempts to reduce her to an idea of helpless, delicate white womanhood in order to keep a grip on her. He can’t imagine Arhian, as the only one of her kind on Earth, and as a woman, as capable of interacting on ethically and politically equitable terms with him. David can then feel comfortable introducing her as one of “many strange and impressive things” from his travels – which of course plays off the history of objectifying displays of racial others. Even the sympathetic hero, Rafe, describes her as a “poor little critter” in an echo of that animalising alienation. The terrifying possibilities of her difference are subsumed into the normativising impulse of Earth societal politics: where her alienness means Ahrian cannot be positioned as a vulnerable white woman, she is a passive animal or an object.

Ahrian takes on Earth’s expected behaviours for feminine white women, of uncomplicated cheerfulness and modesty, in order to disguise her harmful intent. “Ahrian beamed like a happy child, and murmured that her little trinkets [that she made for Rafe and his fiance] weren’t worthy of such an honour” as being part of their wedding ceremony. That’s Rafe’s description: he retains a tendency to infantalise this other even though he knows he ought not to relate to Ahrian as a passive, childlike woman. Of course, it’s the jewellery itself, fused with the power, knowledge, and skill she brought from her own world, that Ahrian uses to try bring the McQuarries down. When she shows herself powerful and capable of harming the McQuarries, who have taken her from her world, Ahrian is reimagined by Rafe as “a woman who had lavender hair and performed witchcraft”. Rafe simply cannot relate to this alien other on her own terms, but slots her into Earth stereotypes of a racial and cultural other, marked by physical features construed as unusual, who performs mysterious magic outside normative knowledges.

She’s both “perfectly” white and not white at all, a woman who both participates in Earth ideas of gender and for whom they are utterly irrelevant beyong taking her captor down. It’s an uncomfortable space for the surviving McQuarries, who have to confront the racialised nature of what they have done while not being able to figure this woman as “us” or “other”.

It’s a good story for thinking about this stuff, not least because it doesn’t straight up use imagined whitenesses as a way to glorify whiteness. Whiteness is always complicated and shifting, never neutral, and imaginary spaces are a useful place to explore how it can function.

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9 thoughts on “Two kinds of whiteness: reimagining white people in fantasy and science fiction”

Thanks for writing this. I’m at a point where I’m outright bored by most sf/f that includes races at all, because it’s usually so LAZY. This is one reason I really like the “Exalted” fantasy setting, which resists having races because of very similar concerns (although eventually the structure of “types” prevailed and sort of rendered the whole thing moot, it being a roleplaying game). What do you think of CJ Cherryh?

She’s SO good. I always feel like she does a much better job with racial stuff than most sf/f authors, although I hesitate to make that assertion with too much certainty, for obvious reasons. As someone who’s gone through extremely intense culture shock, I do feel like her description of culture shock is especially right on.

I love CJ Cherryh as well, although I haven’t read any of her books recently.

Have you read the Sharing Knife series by Lois McMaster Bujold? I don’t think she approached race issues perfectly, but the setting and the take on race and otherness wasn’t the usual cliche, at least.

Well, there’s a start! If you have trouble finding them, can I suggest joining the Sydney Mechanics’ School of Arts (if you haven’t already)? They have more extensive SF/fantasy than many public libraries. Membership is $10-15 a year.

C.J. is a fantastic writer, and a very nice person as well. I don’t know exactly where I would suggest starting with her as she has written both excellent fantasy and equally good Sf.

I find this topic interesting in that I recently rewatched the LoTR films for the first time since they came out in theaters, and it really hit me that in addition to a great heroic story it also comes across as a magnificent glorification of whiteness. The shots of the faces of the beautiful children huddling in Helm’s Deep while the men defend topside are very similar to shots used by D.W. Griffith nearly 70 years ago. I don’t believe this was conscious intent of the filmmakers, but because there are so pitifully few stories and films that depict other cultures with such reverence, or in such epic detail it simply stands out all the more.

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